Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

Skifr leaned close, her eyes bright, and gripped her tight. “Anything! Everything! I am no mean prophet and I foresee great things for you!” Her voice rose higher and higher, louder and louder, and she pointed one clawing finger toward the sky. “We will meet again, Thorn Bathu, on the other side of the Last Door, if not on this one, and I will thrill to the tales of your high deeds, and swell with pride that I played my own small part in them!”

“Damn right you will,” said Thorn, sniffing back her tears. She had held this strange woman in contempt. She had hated her, and feared her, and cursed her name all down the Divine and the Denied. And now she loved her like a mother.

“Be well, my dove. Even more, be ready.” Skifr’s hand darted out but Thorn caught it by the wrist before it could slap her and held it trembling between them.

Skifr smiled wide. “And always strike first.”

Father Yarvi smiled as he peeled away the bandages. “Good. Very good.” He pressed gently at the sore flesh of her cheeks with his fingertips. “You are healing well. Walking already.”

“Lurching like a drunk already.”

“You are lucky, Thorn. You are very lucky.”

“Doubtless. Not every girl gets to be stabbed through the face.”

“And by a duke of royal blood too!”

“The gods have smiled on me, all right.”

“It could have been through your eye. It could have been through your neck.” He started to bathe her face with a flannel that smelled of bitter herbs. “On the whole I would prefer to be scarred than dead, wouldn’t you?”

Thorn pushed her tongue into the salty hole her missing tooth had left. It was hard to think of herself as lucky just then. “How are the scars? Tell me the truth.”

“They will take time to heal, but I think they will heal well. A star on the left and an arrow on the right. There must be some significance in that. Skifr might have told us, she had an eye for portents-”

Thorn did not need Skifr to see into her face’s future. “I’ll be monstrous, won’t I?”

“I know of people with uglier deformities.” And Yarvi put his withered hand under her nose and let the one finger flop back and forth. “Next time, avoid the blade.”

She snorted. “Easily said. Have you ever fought seven men?”

Drops trickled into the steaming bowl as he wrung out the flannel, the water turning a little pink. “I could never beat one.”

“I saw you win a fight once.”

He paused. “Did you indeed?”

“When you were king, I saw you fight Keimdal in the square.” He stared at her for a moment, caught for once off-balance. “And when you lost, you asked to fight him again, and sent your mother’s Chosen Shield in your place. And Hurik ground Keimdal’s face into the sand on your behalf.”

“A warrior fights,” murmured Yarvi. “A king commands.”

“So does a minister.”

He started to smear something on her face that made the stitches sting. “I remember you now. A dark-haired girl, watching.”

“Even then you were a deep-cunning man.”

“I have had to be.”

“Your trip to the First of Cities has turned out better than anyone could’ve hoped.”

“Thanks to you.” He unwound a length of bandage. “You have done what no diplomat could achieve, and made an ally of the Empire of the South. Almost enough to make me glad I didn’t crush you with rocks. And you have your reward.” He tapped at the elf-bangle, its faint light showing through her sleeve.

“I’d give it back if I could open it.”

“Skifr says it cannot be opened. But you should wear it proudly. You have earned it, and more besides. I may not be my mother’s son any longer, but I still have her blood. I remember my debts, Thorn. Just as you remember yours.”

“I’ve had a lot of time for remembering, the last few days. I’ve been remembering Throvenland.”

“Another alliance that no one could have hoped for.”

“You have a habit of coming away with them. I’ve been thinking about the man who poisoned the water.”

“The man you killed?”

Thorn fixed his pale blue eye with hers. “Was he your man?”

Father Yarvi’s face showed no surprise, no confirmation and no denial. He wound the bandages around her head as if she had not spoken.

“A deep-cunning man,” she went on, “in need of allies, knowing King Fynn’s ready temper, might have staged such a thing.”

He pushed a pin gently through the bandages to hold them firm. “And a hot-headed girl, a thorn in the world’s arse, not knowing anything, might have got herself caught up in the gears of it.”

“It could happen.”

“You are not without some cunning of your own.” Father Yarvi put the bandages and the knife carefully away in his bag. “But you must know a deep-cunning man would never lay bare his schemes. Not even to his friends.” He patted her on the shoulder, and stood. “Keep your lies as carefully as your winter grain, my old teacher used to tell me. Rest, now.”

“Father Yarvi?” He turned back, a black shape in the bright outline of the door. “If I hadn’t killed that poisoner … who would have drunk the water?”

A silence, then, and with the light behind him she could not see his face. “Some questions are best not asked, Thorn. And certainly best not answered.”

“Rulf’s been getting the crew back together.” Brand pushed some invisible dust around with the toe of his boot. “Few new men but mostly the same old faces. Koll can’t wait to get started carving the other side of the mast, he says. And Dosduvoi’s thinking of preaching the word of the One God up north. Fror’s with us too.”

Thorn touched a finger to her bandages. “Reckon folk’ll be asking me how I got the scars, now, eh?”

“Hero’s marks,” said Brand, scratching at the ones that snaked up his own forearms. “Marks of a great deed.”

“And it’s hardly like my looks were ever my strongest point, is it?” Another awkward silence. “Father Yarvi says you killed Duke Mikedas.”

Brand winced as though the memory was far from pleasant. “The ground killed him. I just made the introduction.”

“You don’t sound proud of it.”

“No. Not sure I’m touched by Mother War like you are. Don’t have your …”

“Fury?”

“I was going to say courage. Anger I’ve got plenty of. Just wish I didn’t.”

“Father Yarvi says you carried me back. He says you saved my life.”

“Just what an oar-mate does.”

“Thanks for doing it, even so.”

He stared at the ground, chewing at his lip, and finally looked up at her. “I’m sorry. For whatever I did. For …” He had that helpless look of his again, but rather than making her want to hold him, it made her want to hit him. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” she grated out. “Just the way things are.”

“I wish they were a different way.”

“So do I.” She was too tired, too sore, too hurting inside and out to try and make it pretty. “Not as if you can make yourself like someone, is it?”

“Guess not,” he said in a meek little voice that made her want to hit him even more. “Been through a lot together, you and me. Hope we can be friends, still.”

She made her voice cold. Cold and sharp as a drawn blade. It was that or she might set to crying and she wouldn’t do it. “Don’t think that’ll work for me, Brand. Don’t see how this just goes back the way it was.”

His mouth gave a sorry twist at that. As if he was the one hurt. Guilt, more than likely, and she hoped it stung. Hoped it stung half as much as she did. “Up to you.” He turned his back on her. “I’ll be there. If you need me.”

The door shut, and she bared her teeth at it, and that made her face ache, and she felt tears in her eyes, and dashed them hard away. Wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair at all, but she guessed love’s even less fair than the battlefield.